To my knowledge there has never been proposed the concept of a chair or piece of furniture made from thick, strong appearing wooden parallel slats, maintained in position without glue, so that the parts can be bought as a kit and assembled on a living room rug without danger of glue damage, even assembled easily while a person watches television or engages in a family conversation.
To space parallel slats by positions on dowels, maintained by glue between each slat and dowels is a much different way, suitable only for factory assembly, or by persons skillful in handling glue and desirous of hangling glue.
To my knowledge there has been no furniture made in the prior art using parallel wooden slats, separated by parallel wooden spacers, nor has a threaded compression bolt assembly ever been used to compress wooden slats against wooden spacers for achieving the assembling of furniture which need not be glued, and, therefore, which cannot come apart by breakage at glue joints.
I am aware that compression bolts have been used in furniture to hold thermoplastic slats together, and such furniture may be suitable for lawn furniture, but it is not popular as living room furniture, although attractive wooden slats could be a style which, in my opinion, would satisfy many users as suitable living room furniture. It is not simply a matter of exchange of materials, because the massive attractiveness of slats of sizeable cross-section is not practical in plastics, because plastics are expensive and are only affordable in many cases when they are hollow and, therefore, weak and also have visible seams where mould sections come together in manufacture, thus detracting from appearance.
If plastic is made with grooves at the sides, for example, in the form of an "I-beam", then it lacks the solid massiveness of thick wooden slats.
Apart from these factors, most plastic lacks the beauty of wood grain and the use of wood grain in plastics has been affordable mostly on only flat surfaces.
Although there are a few instances in the prior art in which chairs and tables have had recesses extending across horizontal surfaces and disposed in parallelism between the supporting members of the furniture, yet the problems of economically making such furniture have been great in the opinion of the industry and as I understand it.
A particular one of these problems is that wooden furniture made with so many pieces is in danger of coming apart.
The conventional glue construction is simply not adequate in furniture of this type when heavy use is expected. Particularly, this is true of chairs, and it is also true of tables because if tables made of heavy pieces of parallel wood are made in the usual glued together construction, with the only surfaces used in bonding being the surfaces of dowels, then the surfaces are inadequate. Tables are not ordinarily properly used to support weight. But the fact remains that in the course of months' of use many things happen. For example, the massiveness of such furniture would in its appearance tempt persons to sit on it, even though it were in table form. And there is also the danger that someone stumbles and falls against furniture. When the furniture is of the wooden type, using relatively heavy, but completely separate pieces of wood held only by dowels, then the danger of the "pile of slats" coming apart and tumbling down upon such an impact is very great indeed.
Still another problem is humidity change. When the only way that so many separate pieces are secured together in wooden furniture is the proposal of the use of glued dowels, then there is very great danger that the shrinkage of the dowels and of the slats themselves in low humidity situations will be sufficient to cause the glue to crack, the surfaces separate and the furniture becomes only a "pile of sticks".
It is, therefore, an object of the invention to propose furniture made of heavy parallel wooden pieces, which I call slats, which are held together by long bolts, or threaded compression assemblies. Ordinarily, this would not be thought possible because of the necessity of holding the slats apart to retain the "open surfaced beauty" and if small spacers are used between the slats and placed on the bolts, then they would be less desirable than my concepts because such small spacing units would likely be made of a hard substance, and would become compressed into the wood of the slats on each end of a spacer, whereby in the course of time the pressure would be lost and the article of furniture would become loose. This is particularly likely to happen in the case of a chair in which it is not unusual for heavy persons to sit. It is not at all unusual for persons to lean back in a chair. Either of these circumstances would cause the spacers to press into the soft wood of the slats at each end of a spacer, causing the furniture to become loose and undesirable.
I do not know of any instance in the prior art where long compression bolt assemblies have been used to draw together slats of wooden furniture in which the slats themselves are spaced apart by spacers. To go further, I do not know of any instance in the prior art in which wide spacers having great vertical surface areas are proposed to be used between wooden slats and with compression bolt assemblies, which latter would be my concept because of the advantage that the wide spacers would not become compressed into the soft wood of the slats.
I have not known of any instance in the prior art in which parallel slat furniture has been used in which wooden spacers have been employed. Wooden spacers have the particular advantage of beauty. They can match or go with the wood of the slats providing furniture which is suitable for home use, rather than for mere commercial use.
It is an object of this invention to provide furniture which can be made of wood, but which is so durable as to be useful in the hardest commercial use.
A particular object of the invention is to help avoid the great waste of money that is occasioned through the manufacture and purchase of weak, poorly made, easily broken furniture. Home owners tend to have a great amount of capacity for home manufacture of items made and sold to them in kit-form. However, the same persons find it extremely difficult to repair a piece of glued furniture, and with good reason.
It is the common case that glued furniture must be assembled while most of the glued joints are still wet and before they have set up. Most glued furniture requires that the joints be hardening together all at the same time, or at least in groups. Because of this fact it is difficult for the home hobbyist to make furniture by home assembly from kits when the kit itself is of the more conventional type. It is, therefore, an object hereof to provide furniture concepts which will adapt to easy manufacture and easy home assembly both.
The problem of conventional furniture in which repair of sometimes even one glued joint of a chair rung can hardly be done without separating other joints of the chair also is a problem which can be eliminated by the concepts of this invention.
It is an object hereof to provide furniture that does not have to be taken almost completely apart in order to be put together again just in order to fix one, two or three loose joints.
It is an object of this invention to provide furniture which needs substantially no care at all as regards strength.
A particular object is to provide furniture which, if it should become loose, under extremely dry conditions, or with the dryness of great age, can be simply repaired by tightening the nuts of a compression bolt assembly and easily replacing removed bolt assembly hiding plugs.
In the prior art the only furniture concepts proposed, to my knowledge, having horizontally spaced wooden slats have been strong in appearance, but very weak in actuality. Wooden slats can be massive and given the appearance of rugged durability and artistic beauty, which is simply not possible with thermoplastic materials because the volume of the material involved in cross-sectional slats made of wood is so vastly greater than is affordable in the extremely expensive thermoplastic materials.
In the manufacture of thermoplastic materials economy of material is so important that massive appearance is possible at most from only one side or viewpoint and looking at the same piece of furniture from any other angle will show that its components are very skimpy of material.
However, the problem of making heavy slat wooden furniture strong, when the slats must be spaced apart to give the desired effect, is a problem not heretofore answered.
It is desirable that long open spaces exist between adjacent slats. This means that there is no material between the slats at these open spaces whereby a weakness problem could arise.
To use only dowels and glue to bond spaced slats together so as to attempt to depend on the relatively small connection areas of a few dowels, is to invite trouble. Usually for economy the dowels themselves are of wood and, therefore, weak. To make the dowels of any other material than wood would mean that they would perhaps not expand and contract with the wood of the slats and, therefore, separation due to humidity change and ultimate breakage would likely occur if only dowels are used for slat interconnection.
A particular objective is to provide furniture of the attractive massive look of spaced heavy wooden slats which is adapted for kit-sale and home assembly by simply placing a compression bolt assembly through the furniture at the top of each leg and extending over to the opposite leg for drawing slats and spacers together with no tools needed except a single socket wrench which could be supplied with the kit. Further securing can be done in my concept with the use of a dowel at each leg at a horizontal spacing from the compression bolt assembly, the dowel providing economy as compared with the use of an additional compression bolt at each leg with its washers, nuts and assembly time costs.
A particular problem is involved when the legs of furniture are relatively thin transversely of the slats so as not to be thicker than the desired thickness of the spacers. In such a concept the legs themselves are so thin as to be excessively weak when held by means other than compression engaging broad flat vertical surfaces of legs, which latter is especially my concept, my legs having great dimension lengthwise of the slats as compared to their thickness crosswise of the slats.
A particular object also is to provide easy kit assembly or economical factory assembly made possible by avoiding the use of glue. When a compression bolt assembly is used at each leg and completely holds the pieces of that end of the furniture unit together, than I conceive that the dowel can be not only not glued in place but also not tightly fitting. A very loose fit is to be avoided, of course, but the very tight fit which is almost a necessity when the only strength is to be provided by glued dowels is not needed, as I conceive of it, where compression bolt assemblies are used on this wooden furniture, especially when the legs themselves, as well as the spacers, have broad vertical areas, so that the spacers and legs are not caused to press into and compress adjacent surfaces of the slats.
A further objective is to provide a kit for making a furniture unit in which the furniture pieces are prefinished by the factory as made possible by the concept of using compression bolt assemblies in order to hold the wooden parts of the furniture together, rather than glue which would tend to ooze out of places of use, if it were used, destroying some of the pre-finished surfaces.
This is particularly important in kit-furniture because the general public is inexperienced in the use of glue where many surfaces are involved at once. If the glue is of the slow setting type, they may start using the furniture too soon or otherwise cause it to move, thus moving the parts with respect to each other and breaking the glue bond before it is really formed. Elimination of the use of glue has a further advantage that fast setting glues, which some users might try to use, could lead to no end of trouble, because such glues will set up faster than the many pieces can properly be put in place.
There is a great problem in assembling furniture made with tight fitting dowels and yet tight fitting dowels are necessary for strong construction when glued wooden dowels are completely depended upon for the strength of the furniture. Easy-fitting dowels are important to home construction and that is a feature of my furniture concepts.
A further objective is to make the furniture in such a way that only one of the two connectors at each leg has any clue to its existence as the furniture is viewed. I accomplish this by causing one of the connectors not to extend completely through end-most slats. The other connector is prevented from being viewed and all that can be seen as a clue to its existence is an attractive end plug.
A disadvantage of prior art furniture in which spaced parallel slats were held together only by dowels is that end-most slats have been held in place by no means other than dowels and can quite easily come off after the woods have shrunk and the glued joints have become weak.
It has been a common characteristic of furniture held together with glue and dowels that the lower portions of legs must be secured together by rungs or other means. It it an objective hereof to provide legs so strongly held at their tops alone that no connection between the bottom parts of legs is necessary. Beauty is thereby achieved.
In the prior art the only chairs that have had spaced vertically extending members forming the back-rest portions of the chair have not had traditional appearance and have, therefore, not been as desirable for home use, although they might be suitable for commercial use. I propose to achieve conventional appearance by having for the first time the conventional feature of having the back legs of the chair be of one piece with post portions of the chair which extend upwardly from the seating surface and support the back of the chair at the right and left. I propose to make this practical by the placing of a compression bolt assembly extending through the back of the chair for pressing together the major spaced pieces of the back, as well as spacers separating them, so as to make a unitary strong back structure having the conventional appearance feature mentioned.
Still another object is to provide a concept, making practical the pre-finishing of the pieces of the furniture at a factory for the additional advantage that the finish tends to slow down the acquisition of humidity into the wood of the slats and dowels and spacers, whereby it is then the more likely that dowel holes drilled at the factory will not have become excessively tight by the time of assembly at a different location where there is a different humidity.
A further object of this invention is to provide for the possibility of uniformity of slats to reduce inventory problems and make lower costs possible. A chief problem in having uniform slats would be because those certain slats which are adjacent slanting legs would need to have special shapes if completely flat sided legs were to slant outwardly from the center of the furniture unit somewhat. To cause the legs to go straight down in all cases would not be a solution because beauty is needed by slanting certain ones of the legs. Therefore, the slant sided slats could become mixed up with slats which are vertically sided, causing misdelivery problems, especially when kits are being sold, rather than assembled furniture units. Victory was achieved over this problem by the concept of providing the upper ends of the legs with special vertical surfaces, even though those parts of the legs which lie beneath beneath the slats are inclined with respect to the vertical, as achieved by shaping the upper ends of certain legs which are desired to be slanted.
With this method the slats which are abutting an inclined leg can be of the same shape as other slats. This problem and solution is not to be confused, however, with the fact that it may be purposely desirable to have certain rectangular cross section slats of lesser width than other slats for variety in appearance. This latter situation creates no problem, however, because slats which are perhaps half as thick as others are easily recognized.
A speed objective is to provide a chair a good handyman can assemble in less than 10 minutes and disassemble in even less time.